❤️ 🍵 Tea’s Recommendations 🍵 ❤️ (October) (Things I Like That You Might Like Too)

Hello!

Sometimes I get caught in a cycle of the same movies, books, activities, and whatever else. If you also suffer from this, I hope this small collection of recommendations can be of some help.

P.S. These are obviously just things I like and if you don’t like them too, then that’s absolutely a-okay ❤️

✨TV Shows/Movies:✨

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

A horror comedy that repeats the same joke over and over and it never feels like a dud? Look no further than Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. Two good-natured men get mistaken for murderous hillbillies by a group of college kids.

Funny and even oddly wholesome in places, this movie is perfect for those who prefer their horror on the campy side.

Lizzie (2018):

The true story of Lizzie Borden, a 19th century woman from Massachusetts, accused of killing her father and step-mother with a hatchet.

The film is a sensory overload of creaking floorboards, crackling fires, and a quiet evil that creeps in the night. Suspenseful, tense, with a beautiful love story woven in-between - I saw Lizzie as much more of a female tragedy than a horror film. This was a real woman, who was abused by her real guardians, on the precipice of being committed to a mental institution by said guardians. This was a queer woman in a world that couldn’t even comprehend queer love as anything other than deviant. This was someone who was pushed and pushed and then, finally, pushed back.

✨Spoiler Alert.✨

The delicious irony of Lizzie’s story is that the same misogyny that entrapped her, was the same misogyny that enabled her escape. Ultimately, Lizzie Borden was found not guilty by virtue of being a woman - and clearly, no woman could ever commit such heinous acts.   

Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story (2024):

This is Ryan Murphy’s dramatisation of the real life case of the Menendez brothers who were accused and then convicted of murdering their parents in 1989.

I can definitely see why people have a few issues with the drama - sexualising real life people who are both victims and killers, hypothesising unfounded theories, amongst a litany of other complaints.

However, I do still think the acting, intent and ultimately result of the drama is overall worth a watch. I personally believe that the brothers were violently abused and killed their parents in response to the years of SA and torture.

I know I can’t say that this is fact, but I believe based on the evidence, testimonies and characterisation of their father - that Jose Menendez did rape and torture his sons and that Kitty Menendez allowed and even enabled it.

It saddens me greatly that people treat Lyle and Eric as if dichotomy cannot exist within a person - you can be a spoilt, rich kid and you can also have suffered unimaginable abuse. It’s not the picture of a victim that a lot of us are comfortable with, but it is a real one.

Abusers often shower their victims with material possessions for two reasons - one to ‘compensate’ for the abuse - two to make the victims beholden to their abuser. Abuse takes many forms and it rarely stays in one lane. Where there is physical abuse, there can also be financial, psychological and sexual abuse.

I firmly believe that the ideas around sex, gender and abuse were contributors to their conviction. Lyle's prosecutor, Pam Bozanich, argued that "men could not be raped, because they lack the necessary equipment to be raped."

If that quote doesn’t just encapsulate the entire attitude towards the sexual abuse of men, both at the time and even (to a certain extent) still today… I don’t know what will.

Context is everything. Lyle and Eric did kill their parents. But it wasn’t for money. It was because they had been sexually abused from the age of six. Lyle’s sexual abuse had stopped around eight, but Eric’s continued until he was eighteen, just days before the murder.

Lyle and Eric did not behave like the reasonable average person because they were not the reasonable average person. You cannot be treated in such a violent and inhumane way and expect to behave to the contrary.

✨Music:✨

Goodbye Earl  - The Chicks

If Ya Getting Down - The Five

I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

I Was Made for Lovin’ You - Kiss

Blame it on the Rain - Milli Vanilli

Brutus - The Buttress

Knowing Me, Knowing You - ABBA

Devil’s Spoke - Laura Marling

One Way or Another - Blondie

Laughing on the Outside - Bernadette Carrol

Bust Your Knee Caps - Pomplamoose

✨Activities:✨

I know I say pretty much the same thing every time on the activities section, but I really do mean it - do what makes you happy.

For me, right now, that’s getting snuggly in blankets, drinking a cuppa out of pumpkin mug, and watching my comfort shows.

The rain is pouring, the temperature has dropped and we are all officially in cardigans and knitted socks. I am at peace. It is temporary and a new stress will always emerge, but for the most part, I am happy right now.

Comfy clothes, comfy shows, pumpkin candles and a log fire crackling in the burner. I am woods witch. Hear me snore 😴 💤💤